The snow-covered Russian city of Saint Petersburg on the Neva Bay is pictured in this image from the Sentinel-2A satellite.

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While this image may appear to be in black and white, it is in true colour – although the snow cover and lack of vegetation during the winter lend very little colour to the scene.

One of the most prominent features is the large area of ice and snow covering the water. Looking closer to the lower-central part of the image, we can see where icebreakers have created a straight route to and from Saint Petersburg’s port. The boats leaving the port continue west following a channel through the Saint Petersburg Dam south of Kotlin Island, and into the Gulf of Finland.

There are five other breaks along the northern stretch of the dam without ice because the flowing water prevented freezing.

The 25 km-long dam complex protects the city from storm surges, and also acts as a bridge from the mainland to Kotlin Island.

On the right, the Neva River flows through the centre of Saint Petersburg – Russia’s second largest city. Sometimes dubbed the ‘Venice of the North’ for its numerous canals and more than 400 bridges, the city centre dates back to 1703 and was built by Tsar Peter the Great. Today, Saint Petersburg is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

How do you deliver supplies to one of the remotest research stations on Earth? Put the equipment and food on skis and pull them by tractor across the ice and snow in a long caravan.

This image was taken by France’s Pleiades satellite orbiting 700 km high. The convoy of supplies can be seen on the 1000 km trek from Dumont d’Urville on the Antarctic coast to Concordia research station.

The traverse across Antarctica takes 10 days, climbing more than 3000 m to reach Concordia’s plateau. Pulled by heavy-duty tractors, the caravans carry up to 300 tonnes of fuel, food and heavy equipment in 300 m-long convoys organised by France’s IPEV polar institute.

Once at Concordia, three days are spent unpacking and preparing for the return trip. The trip back to the coast generally takes two days less because it is downhill most of the way.

Concordia sits on a plateau 3200 m above sea level. A place of extremes, temperatures can drop to –80°C in the winter, and the Sun does not rise above the horizon in the winter, forcing the crew to live in isolation without sunlight for four months of the year.

For ESA, the isolation and extreme weather offer interesting parallels with spaceflight and living on another planet. Each year an ESA-sponsored medical doctor joins the crew of the Italian–French station to monitor and run experiments on the crew of up to 15.

In addition, the area around Concordia is also used as a validation site for a number of ESA’s Earth observation missions such as the Soil Moisture and Ocean Salinity satellite.

Meet Dione, a 1122 km-diameter icy satellite of Saturn and the 15th largest moon in the Solar System.

This global colour mosaic of the moon’s intriguing surface was produced from images taken by the international Cassini spacecraft during its first 10 years of exploring the Saturn system.

Perhaps the most striking observation is the difference in colour and brightness between the left and right halves of the image. They correspond to the ‘trailing’ and ‘leading’ hemispheres respectively, in terms of the direction that the moon is travelling along its orbit around Saturn every 2.7 days.

The dark coating on the trailing hemisphere is thought to be due to radiation from Saturn’s magnetosphere, which causes organic elements in the moon’s surface to become darker and redder in appearance.

The wispy white streaks that wind through the coloured surface are bright ice cliffs – some several hundred metres high – resulting from tectonic fractures.

Meanwhile the leading hemisphere has been painted with icy dust from Saturn’s E-ring, which itself is fed by tiny particles ejected from nearby moon Enceladus.

While Enceladus continuously spews gas and icy particles into space from fractures near its south pole. Dione appears to be quiet at present, but its fractured surface certainly points to a more geologically active past.

Indeed, a recent theoretical modelling study by independent researchers suggest that there could be an underground ocean surrounding the moon’s rocky core, buried some 100 km beneath its battered shell.

The Cassini–Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA and ASI, the Italian space agency. The mission launched in 1997, and arrived in the Saturn system in 2004, with the Huygens probe landing on Titan in January 2005. In September of this year, the Cassini spacecraft will plunge into Saturn’s atmosphere to conclude its incredible mission.

Since 2015, the Sentinel-2 team at ESA’s mission control in Darmstadt, Germany, have been flying the Sentinel-2A satellite, an Earth observation mission developed by ESA as part of Europe’s ambitious Copernicus programme.

Each Sentinel-2 satellite carries a camera providing a new perspective of our land and vegetation. The combination of high resolution, novel spectral capabilities, a swath width of 290 km and frequent revisits are providing unprecedented views of Earth.

Once the second craft is in space, the mission’s ‘space segment’ will have a pair of identical satellites in the same orbit, 180° apart for optimal coverage.

Together they will cover all of Earth’s land surfaces, large islands, inland and coastal waters every five days at the equator.

On 7 March, the team will assume control of the 2B satellite shortly after it is lofted into space by a Vega rocket from Kourou, French Guiana. Before then, 16 intensive simulation sessions will help to ensure that the entire mission control team are ready for space.

In this photo of 11 January 2017 in the Main Control Room, Spacecraft Operations Engineer Pol Sintes is seen sitting in the foreground. In the background are Spacecraft Operations Engineer Salvatore Nocella and Spacecraft Operations Manager Franco Marchese.

The payload module of MetOp-C, Europe’s latest weather satellite, is in place at ESA’s technical centre in the Netherlands for rigorous testing in space-like conditions.

MetOp is a set of three polar-orbiting satellites whose temperature and humidity observations from a relatively close 800 km-altitude orbit have sharpened the accuracy of weather forecasting.

Procured by ESA for Eumetsat, the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites, MetOp-A was launched in 2006 and MetOp-B in 2012, with MetOp-C due to follow next year.

MetOp-C’s sensor module was transported in the first week of January from Airbus Defence and Space in Friedrichshafen, Germany to ESA’s Test Centre in Noordwijk in the Netherlands, which is equipped to simulate every aspect of the space environment.

The 2.1 tonne module carries a suite of meteorology and climatology instruments, variously procured by ESA or sourced from Eumetsat, France’s CNES space agency and the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

“The operation of the payload module and its instruments needs to be verified in space-like vacuum conditions,” explains Jacques Mauduit of European Test Services, the company operating the centre for ESA.

“This ‘thermal vacuum’ testing will take place in the Large Space Simulator this spring, with cryogenically cooled ‘blackbodies’ fitted in front of individual instrument openings or radiators to control their temperatures to within 100–30ºC of absolute zero.”

Once testing is complete, MetOp-C’s payload module will travel to the Airbus Defence and Space facility in Toulouse, France, to be integrated with its service module – the segment of the satellite providing attitude and orbit control, electrical power and communications, and hosting the main computer.

The launch of MetOp-C by Soyuz from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana is scheduled for October 2018.

On 5 January 2017, the Sentinel-2B satellite was shipped from ESA’s site in the Netherlands – where it had been undergoing testing since June – and arrived safe and sound in French Guiana the following day. Over the next seven weeks the satellite will be tested and prepared for liftoff on a Vega rocket.

The second Sentinel-2 satellite, Sentinel-2B, arrived at Europe’s spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana on 6 January 2017 to be prepared for launch. After being moved to the cleanroom and left for a couple of days to acclimatise, cranes were used to open the container and unveil the satellite. Over the next seven weeks the satellite will be tested and prepared for liftoff on a Vega rocket.

ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet (left) and NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough (right) testing their spacesuit gear for a spacewalk on 13 January 2017 to upgrade the International Space Station's power supply. NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson helped the duo into their suits.

Thomas and Shane’s spacewalk is the second to work on the batteries. Peggy and Shane spent six hours and 32 minutes outside installing adapter plates and connecting three of the six new batteries on Friday 6 January.

Thomas practised this spacewalk for months on Earth at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, USA, and has spent the last few weeks in space working intensively to prepare the spacesuits and tools for the sortie.

ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet testing his spacesuit for his first spacewalk, on Friday 13 January 2017. Together with NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough, he will exit the International Space Station at 12:05 GMT (13:05 CET) to complete a battery upgrade to the outpost’s power system.

Thomas and Shane’s spacewalk this week is the second to work on the batteries. NASA astronaut Peggy Whitson and Shane spent six hours and 32 minutes outside installing adapter plates and connecting three of the six new batteries on Friday 6 January.

Thomas practised this spacewalk for months on Earth at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, USA, and has spent the last few weeks in space working intensively to prepare the spacesuits and tools for the sortie.